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Tag: Jena Antonucci
Jena Antonucci Joins the TDN Writers’ Room
Prior to the running of the GI Belmont S., Jena Antonucci was hardly a household name, even within racing circles. Not anymore. The win she pulled off with Arcangelo (Arrogate) in the Belmont and the story it involved, a female trainer with a small stable and her $35,000 yearling creating history at Belmont Park, has energized an industry that was desperate for some good news.
How did she do it and what did the win mean to her? Those were among the questions we asked her when Antonucci joined the team for this week's TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland. Antonucci was the Green Group Guest of the Week.
So far as why her story has been such a popular one, Antonucci believes people relate to someone who keeps going in the face of adversity.
“There have been opportunities that I have wanted or that I have been asking for and the answers were no. And no is two letters,” she said. “It doesn't define where you're going and what you're doing. It's a no right now, but it may be a yes later. So handle yourself appropriately. But if you're not happy with what's happening in your space, don't be a victim to that. It's up to you to take ownership of that and to pivot.”
It remains to be seen if the Belmont win will change the course of Antonucci's career and improve the type of horses she gets to train. Whether it does or not, the trainer said she will keep doing things the way she has always done them, focusing on surrounding herself with quality people and doing her best by the horses.
“My focus is to deal with good people,” she said. “When you deal with good people, good things will happen and our focus will never change with that. As for the horses, we're going to do our best to steward the best possible outcomes for the horses that come into our hands. That's always been a core foundation of who I am as a person. I've said it from day one–I'll never train a million horses, but any horse that comes through our hands, we're going to do our absolute best to make responsible decisions and steward the best possible outcomes we can no matter what those outcomes are.”
Antonucci has been on a whirlwind media tour since the Belmont and has been an ambassador for the sport. What is the message she wants to convey about racing?
“That it's amazing and it's full of amazing people,” she said. “I'll talk about the taboo topic and I don't have a problem talking about it. It's breakdowns and fatalities. I very clearly understand that the general public views our industry as [if] we're profiting from horses and we're killing them. That's the thread that we are all trying to navigate and do better with. So if we aren't telling our story and if we aren't sharing with people how we're doing better, whether you want to lean into HISA or not, we have to. We have to and we are. We are doing better and we will continue to do better. It's about setting realistic expectations and educating people on what amazing things happen and what amazing lives these horses have and how much they enrich life for so many people.”
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by Coolmore, the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, 1/st Racing, WinStar Farm, XBTV, Lane's End and West Point Thoroughbreds, the team of Bill Finley, Randy Moss and Zoe Cadman reviewed the Belmont and the races on the Belmont undercard and delved into the recent developments involving Linda Rice and Kent Desormeaux.
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NTL Kickoff Event at Hudson Yards Promises Change for Racing
An event to announce the team owners, names, colors and logos for the six National Thoroughbred League teams promised the assembled crowd at Hudson Yards in Manhattan to do racing in a new and different way, and at least on this night, they delivered.
The evening featured a fashion show—not of the racing silks or owners—but for the horses. Two horses brought into the city from Long Island showed off the six team colors and logos in compression suits, compression hoods and paddock blankets, parading up and down in the Public Square and Gardens of Hudson Yards.
But while the horses were the stars of the evening, there were human celebrities as well, including New York Giants outside linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux, one of the owners of the New York Knights, one of the six NTL teams. Trainer Jena Antonucci, fresh off her history-making Belmont Stakes win, was also on hand to greet well-wishers.
“I think it's super exciting, one, being a player, two, now being a part of a league,” said Thibodeaux, explaining his involvement in the NTL. “My little sister has been riding horses for a while, so I told her I did this for her. And being able to bring a different look, bring some new ideas and just a whole new perspective, one, to horse racing and, two, to my own life and the people that follow me. So I'm super excited. I think it'll be amazing.”
The NTL concept was introduced May 23, the brainchild of Randall Lane, the chief content officer for Forbes, and Bob Daugherty, an investor and educator. Set to launch on Sept. 2, the league will consist of six teams representing six cities. League races will take place on five weekends, points will be accrued in the races and the team that has the most points when the season ends on Dec. 31 at Tampa Bay Downs will win $1 million.
Horses in compression suits peaked the curiosity of onlookers in Manhattan Tuesday night at the NTL launch event | Sue Finley photo
Each of the six teams were represented Tuesday night in Manhattan by all or part of their ownership groups.
The New York Knights will be owned by Thibodeaux and Lane, who were both on hand. The California Shamrocks will be owned by Daugherty and partners. Other teams revealed were the Nashville Dreams, the Philadelphia Stallions, the New Jersey Royals, and the Seattle Gems.
The emcee for the night, longtime racing t.v. executive Billy Rapaport, a member of the NTL's advisory group, said that the NTL was designed to promote fan loyalty.
“It's about building not only awareness, but building rooting interest,” he said. “So you're going to root for your team from your hometown, you're going to root for your team from your home state. And we're going to build this around not only the fan loyalty, but about the fan experience because the NTL is not just about racing. It will be great racing and team racing, but it will be all about the festive, fun, great events that surround the NTL. So it's a weekend of concerts, music, fashion, fun, food, all the things that you would expect from high-level top-shelf entertainment, but we also have a little horse racing going on, too. And that's exciting for us, especially for people like myself who've been around the sport for so long to see new ideas come to the fore, but also to know that we're going to get some new people to come try this sport out for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.”
NTL Co-founder Randall Lane | Sue Finley photo
Said Lane of his involvement, “This is a big night. My father and my grandfather were horsemen. My grandfather spent 50 years going to the track, and the reason he went is because he loved he loved the animals, he loved the horses, he loved the athletes, and he cared about them. That's very, very important to us. So safety and protecting our athletes is paramount to everything we do at the National Thoroughbred League.
“We have an independent chief safety officer who will be in charge of the horses' wellbeing,” he continued. “And it is their job to make sure the horses are ready to race, so it's not the owners' decision for the team, it's not the trainer's decision, it's the central league's. The chief safety officer will have a whole panel of veterinarians to decide which horses are fit. So we think that adds an extra layer because the thing that's most paramount to this league is that we celebrate our stars, we celebrate our teams, and that starts with keeping our stars safe and healthy. So that's what we're here announcing today.”
Lane said the NTL would also partner with the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance to ensure that all of the NTL horses had post-racing homes, and with the Jockeys Guild.
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Seven Days: Many Indicators of Success
In the European edition we really shouldn't be overstepping our boundary to encroach on the territory of our American colleagues who did such a fine job in conveying the stories from Belmont Park last week.
Racing faces different problems in different jurisdictions and, from an outsider's perspective, it is hard to get fully behind racing in America when a number of its major participants remain overly reliant on medication. But if you read Cynthia Holt's wonderful account of being at Belmont 50 years ago to bear witness to arguably the greatest-ever performance by a Thoroughbred as Secretariat went for the Triple Crown, it is impossible not to wish for that situation to improve and for racing to be able to hold its head high. The only way it can survive and thrive around the world is if everyone involved pledges to do the the very best for the horses who make it possible to work in such an engaging and vibrant sport.
That is why the result of the 155th Belmont S. was so uplifting. For a start, it heralded yet another important marker in the advancement of women within the sport, with Jena Antonucci becoming the first female trainer of the winner of an American Triple Crown race. But more importantly, Arcangelo's victory was a major triumph for a smaller trainer who is apparently prepared to prioritise the welfare of her horses above all else. Coming with a horse who cost his owner Jon Ebbert $35,000 at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale, it is also a result which sends a message to other small operators: it can be done.
It should not be underestimated how much stories of this ilk are needed, and how much rarer they are becoming. It is hard now to imagine a trainer like Joe Janiak, a former taxi driver, turning up at Royal Ascot with his cast-off sprinter Takeover Target (Aus) and waltzing off with one of the week's biggest prizes. In three years and six starts at the royal meeting, the gelding with chipped knees was never out of the first four in the major sprints. And yes, his success had no bearing on the betterment of the breed, but what a battler, what a story.
Somehow, it is harder to get behind the horses owned by major investment syndicates, and that is not to denigrate the people funding those runners. Financial investment is vital for racing to continue, and for the breeders to be able to go on producing the goods, but emotional investment is just as important, and that is what you hear and feel when you read Jena Antonucci's story. The spotlight should always be on the horses, but racing is so much more compelling when you can root for their people, too.
I will confess that, until this past week, I knew barely anything about Antonucci. Some engaging interviews following her Belmont S. victory led me to her website and I was taken by one of the sub-headings on her homepage which stated 'Statistics aren't the only indicator of success'. It was an apposite line to read following the release of a video by a major syndicate trying to sell shares in a new recruit, in which the manager pours scorn on the record and percentages of the horse's former trainer. It was an act of quite staggering ignorance, bad manners and, ultimately, self-harm.
The colt in question is New Energy (Ire) (New Bay {GB}), who until last week was the top-rated horse in Sheila Lavery's stable. He is a horse who, since this time last year following his second-place finish in the Irish 2,000 Guineas, has been running with an official mark of 112 or 113. In other words, consistent and classy. Those two facts are surely the reason he was such a desirable purchase, and he was likely bought for many multiples of the £65,000 it took for his trainer and Ted Durcan to secure him at the breeze-up sales two years ago.
He's not a one-off for Lavery, either, for she regularly gets a good tune out of horses who could be overlooked in bigger yards. Four years ago, she trained the €15,000 weanling purchase Lady Kaya (Ire) (Dandy Man {Ire}) to run second in the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket. I can still hear the devastation in her voice when she spoke of that filly's fatal injury on the gallops in the countdown to her next appearance at Royal Ascot. She will have been almost similarly upset to have lost New Energy to an Australian stable which has hundreds and hundreds of horses on its books. Lavery will have understood, though, that the horse had a greater chance of being a high earner in a jurisdiction endowed with plentiful prize-money, and in a sector where he may encounter weaker opposition than he has done in Europe.
Lavery and Antonucci have had 59 and 52 starters this year respectively, and it is well within the bounds of possibility that we will see Lavery follow Antonucci in becoming a Group/Grade 1-winning trainer. That of course becomes harder to achieve for every smaller operation as the good horses get whisked away by those with large cheque books. But in the cases of both women, and many other trainers of a similar size, a strong argument can be made for them not to be overlooked in the stampede towards the superstables.
Al Asifah a Potential Star for Shadwell
There is no such thing as a quiet week in racing, but with Royal Ascot now only a week away, and Epsom a week behind us, the fare of the last seven days has been more muted. However, there have been plenty of impressive performances to note, and none perhaps more so than the win of Shadwell's Al Asifah (GB) in the Listed Weatherbys/British EBF Agnes Keyser Fillies' S. The daughter of Frankel (GB) and Aneen (Ire) (Lawman {Fr}), herself a half-sister to Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Awtaad (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}), may have missed most of the Classics but it would be no surprise to see her engaged in Group 1 races before too long, despite her inexperience.
Similarly, it was hard not to be impressed by the performance of Beautiful Diamond (GB) (Twilight Son {GB}) in her winning debut for Karl Burke and Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum at Nottingham. A pinhooking triumph for Tradewinds Stud, she went from being a 30,000gns yearling to a £360,000 breezer when becoming the most expensive filly sold at the Goffs UK Breeze-up Sale in April.
Richard Fahey spoke eloquently in these pages last week of his approach to two-year-olds, and he has plenty of his stable's youngsters firing ahead of an important week. That was particularly notable by his twin strike at Beverley on Saturday with Midnight Affair (Ire) (Dark Angel {Ire}) in the Hilary Needler and Bombay Bazaar (GB) (Kodiac {GB}) in the Two-Year-Old Trophy.
From Rome to Hokkaido
Three nations combined in the winner of the Tattersalls-sponsored G2 Oaks d'Italia. Trainer Stefano Botti won the race for the fifth time since 2012 with Shavasana (Ire), who is now unbeaten in five starts, including the G3 Premio Regina Elena (Italian 1,000 Guineas). This time, however, she was ridden by Britain's Hollie Doyle, whose first Classic success came aboard Nashwa (GB) in last year's Prix de Diane, and won in the colours of leading Japanese owner/breeder Katsumi Yoshida, who bought the filly after her first Classic win.
Remarkably, Botti's first three wins in the Italian Oaks came in consecutive years with the half-sisters Cherry Collect (Ire) (Oratorio {Ire}), Charity Line (Ire) (Manduro {Ger}) and Final Score (Ire) (Dylan Thomas {Ire}). Another of their half-sisters, Sea Of Class (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}), later won the Irish Oaks, making their dam, Holy Moon (GB) (Hernando {Fr}), a most prized member of the broodmare band owned by the Botti family's Razza del Velino, who also bred Shavasana.
The Holy Moon family and the Oaks d'Italia are also clearly prized in Japan as all three of those aforementioned winning half-sisters are now in the ownership of either Katsumi or Teruya Yoshida.
Straight Ahead to Hamburg
The G2 Union-Rennen at Cologne provided the latest shake-up to the market of the G1 Deutsches Derby on July 2, which is now headed by Straight (Ger) (Zarak {Fr}). The Gestut Karlshof homebred has every right to be considered a serious Classic prospect, not just on his win in the 188th Union-Rennen but also for the names found on his page.
Straight's fourth dam Sacarina (GB) (Old Vic {GB}) has been a key player in the success of the Faust family's Karlshof operation. His third dam Sahel (Ger) (Monsun {Ger}) is a full-sister to the Deutsches Derby winners Samum (Ger) and Schiaparelli (Ger) as well as to the Preis der Diana winner Salve Regine (Ger). Another sister, Sanwa (Ger), is the dam of the 2014 Deutsches Derby winner Sea The Moon (Ger), who is in turn the sire of the another of the leading fancies for this year's race, Fantastic Moon (Ger), who was champion two-year-old last year in Germany.
Another Zarak colt from the immediate family of Straight also features in the Derby betting: Sirjan (Ger), a Group 3 winner in Italy last year, was also bred at Karlshof and is a half-brother to Straight's dam Seductive (Ger) (Henrythenavigator).
It is a family which has already tasted Classic success in Europe this season as yet another of Sacarina's daughters by Monsun, Sortita (Ger), features as the grand-dam of the G2 Derby Italiano winner Goldenas (Ire) (Golden Horn {GB}).
And Now For Something Completely Different
If you wander into the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, you might expect to find exhibitions pertaining to the horse in some form or other.
This summer, however, the museum has spread its wings to become involved in a show named The Urban Frame: Mutiny In Colour, which opened last week and is being staged across three venues in Suffolk. The exhibition includes more than 50 works from some renowned contemporary artists, including Banksy, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
The street artist and international man (or woman) of mystery, Banksy, is also represented at the National Horseracing Museum in The 7: Banksy Under Siege, which features replicas of life-size 'walls' created during the artist's visit to Ukraine last year.
It is a world-first for this exhibition, which runs until October 1. Who says Newmarket is boring?
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